If you didn't know any better, you'd probably assume Microsoft ($MSFT) — by most measures, the 4th most valuable company in the world behind only Amazon, Apple, and Google — was doing just fine despite an upside-down economy in the middle of a global pandemic.

But job listing data, tracked via Microsoft's recruiting websites, reveals that the company has cut back on open positions by nearly 50% in just the past three weeks.

On March 22, 2020, Microsoft listed 5,580 openings on its main careers site. By April 20, that number sunk to 3,028, a 46% drop in hiring activity. While that's a large pause for many positions, Microsoft-owned career website LinkedIn has seen an even more stark drop in hiring.

On March 1, 2020, LinkedIn listed 510 openings. As of this week, LinkedIn shows only 3 openings for its entire business. 

LinkedIn's drop in hiring activity is understandable in this context. The company's main source of revenue comes from job listings, and, as we've seen from dozens of companies, job listings are down across the board.

Microsoft, however, is a bit of a conundrum here. The company has been busy as of late, pushing Microsoft Teams as an alternative to Slack, Office 365 as a remote collaboration platform, its cloud products, and its Mixer game streaming platform as a diversion.

The hiring slowdown at Microsoft is across the board for the most part. Of the 20 categories for which the company hires, all have seen drops in openings. None, however, more so than engineering, for which Microsoft is typically hiring for thousands of openings.

About the Data:

Thinknum tracks companies using the information they post online - jobs, social and web traffic, product sales and app ratings - and creates data sets that measure factors like hiring, revenue and foot traffic. Data sets may not be fully comprehensive (they only account for what is available on the web), but they can be used to gauge performance factors like staffing and sales. 

Further Reading: 

Ad placeholder